后商对《Kingdom of Characters》的笔记(1)

the last words

 
There is a growing sense that China must now go its own way, having spent more than two centuries following the ways of the West, a path it believes it has exhausted. Through the technological revolution of the Chinese script, China got its cultural confidence back. Yet an underdog mentality remains strong. The country came close to losing its written language but was saved, time and again, by its own language devotees and people. But there are no ready believers in the world beyond China and the Chinese language, where, despite the progress and determination China has made in the past forty years, the new global power has to renegotiate with the world it is trying to reshape in order to host a different world order than the one it has learned. The Chinese state is cognizant of the importance of crafting its own image in the world. To tell China’s story well, as Xi Jinping reminded the Chinese people at the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in October 2017, is to build the country’s cultural soft power. Millennia of acculturating and surviving the intrusion of outsiders has led to the return of a deep-rooted belief in the ultimately correct path of sinicization. With the country’s most ambitious scientific and technological plans to date now under way, the China story no doubt aims for a triumphant narrative. But China will not be the only author. There are no easy converts in the world the way there were native champions of the Chinese language, and the opinions of others will determine the new global power’s success and failure. Still unfolding, history will overtake China’s story.